Banana Pi

This section describes

How you install Plop Linux on the Banana Pi.
Building the boot.scr file.
Set the green Banana Pi led.

Linux Kernel version: 4.2.3

Install Plop Linux

Plop Linux is for advanced Linux users. The install documentation does not describe every step with commands. When it's too difficult for people then I will update this page with more details.

Boot a Linux on a computer with a SD card reader.

Download ploplinux-desktop-24.2-arm.tar.gz and banana-pi-boot.tar.gz.

• On the SD Card, create one partition for Plop Linux.

• Create an Ext3 file system on the mkfs.ext3 /dev/PARTITION1. Minimum size is 7 GB (or 3 GB without /opt).

Note: /dev/PARTITION1 is only a placeholder. You have to set the device node of your partition. Example: /dev/sdd1

• Mount the partition to /mnt

• Extract the ploplinux-desktop-24.2-arm.tar.gz archive to /mnt

• Move the directories in /mnt/ploplinux-desktop-24.2-arm/ one directory up that they became the root directories on the Plop Linux partition.

• Remove the empty /mnt/ploplinux-desktop-24.2-arm/ directory.

• Extract the banana-pi-boot.tar.gz archive to /mnt

• Install the U-Boot boot loader. Change to /mnt/boot and run dd if=u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin of=/dev/SDCARD bs=1024 seek=8

Note: /dev/SDCARD is only a placeholder. You have to set the device node of your SD Card. Example: /dev/sdd

Note: I am using the U-Boot binary and the kernel of armbian.

• A few important files (the default settings should be ok):

Edit /mnt/etc/fstab to your system setup.

Edit the Banana Pi section in /mnt/etc/rc.local.

• Unmount /mnt

Now boot your Banana Pi with the SD card. Continue with the personalisation of your fresh system. See here for general Plop Linux Desktop configurations and here for ARM related configurations.

Building boot.scr

Modify the file /etc/boot.cmd for your needs.

To create the boot.scr file run mkimage -C none -A arm -T script -d boot.cmd boot.scr

Banana Pi green led

The Banana Pi has 1 configurable led. For example SD Card access, CPU usage and much more.

The green led is /sys/class/leds/bananapi:green:usr/

In this directory you find the file trigger file. Run cat trigger to list the possible values. The current setting is marked with square brackets.

Here is the Plop Linux setup from /etc/rc.local.

# Set green led to SD Card actvity
echo mmc0 > /sys/class/leds/bananapi:green:usr/trigger

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